Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/26699
Teamster Troubles O Independent owner-operators often found themselves at odds with the nation’s most powerful union. BY LUCINDA COULTER verdrive’s early advocacy often took the form of screeds against oil companies, regulatory agencies or any other group that threatened independent truckers. During this era of heavy regula- tion of the transportation industry, the magazine’s standard fare included articles on carriers convicted of bribing governors, railroads’ unfair control of freight, and the unjust shipping rates set by the Interstate Commerce Commission. What Overdrive saw as the biggest threat to its read- ers’ independence was the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. As early as 1963, the magazine began reporting on the union’s corruption. Soon after former Teamster leader James R. Hoffa disappeared, the September 1975 issue of Time magazine praised Overdrive’s moxie for reporting on the Teamsters’ misuse of its pension funds and schemes to divert union funds into resorts: “Gunmen shot out the gas signs of a stop in Indiana and threatened worse if the [magazine] display rack did not go. When it comes to circulation, Overdrive magazine has had some unique problems.” That’s the price “for documenting corruption in the trucking industry,” Time’s editors wrote. In 1980, trucking deregulation delivered a blow to the Team- sters’ organizing power. Membership dropped and the union rejoined the AFL-CIO. In 1989, Rudolph Giuliani, then a U.S. Attorney in New York, brought a suit against the union through the U.S. Department of Justice, which greatly diminished the brotherhood’s covert maneuvers. The suit charged the union had (RICO) against a national union. The union in recent years has been a law-abiding group more interested in its members’ contracts under James P. Hoffa, son of James R. Hoffa. But on matters of independent contractor rights, owner-operators often still oppose its policies. 50 OVERDRIVE MARCH 2011 In the April 1968 issue, Overdrive reported on multi- million-dollar loans the Teamsters Pension Fund made to a real estate developer who planned to build a community near San Diego, Calif. This illustration of Teamster President James R. Hoffa behind bars lampooned the leader whose group continued to abuse the members’ pension funds while he served a prison sentence. Art Director Paul Goeppner’s cartoon blasts “solicit- ing carriers” for bowing to Teamsters’ pressures.